We have a pretty epic view from the hotel room in Tokyo I’ve been staying at for the last four days. Tonight was the best sunset of the four days to say the least. Unfortunately, our crew is leaving tomorrow. I’ll have an update in the next few days.
Day one today! Hopefully it’s something like this!
A few weeks ago I went out to Miller Motorsports Park in Tooele, UT to help out Orlando Echeverria on his shoot for Modified Magazine of Aaron Brown’s Mitsubishi Evo 9. Orlando’s shown me a bit with his camera rig shots and has a bit on his blog here of the behind the scenes. As much as I’d love to be shooting my own rig shots, I haven’t committed to the investment of getting a proper rig, as they are quite expensive for me to do that right now!
Anyhoo, I finally got a chance to use some graduated neutral density filters, and take a car portrait out on the track so it was a pretty good day of new things for me. I do have to say, driving my truck on a race track to get out to the shooting location was so so so painful……a truck, on a race track. Yah.
Nikon D3 / Nikon 16mm f2.8 Fisheye / ISO 200 @ 1/1000 sec @ f6.3 / Elinchrom Ranger RX AS Speed with A-Head / Pocket Wizard FlexTT5 Transcievers for Nikon
I finally had the opportunity to make it to the Red Bull Rampage this summer. The Red Bull Rampage is the event of all events in mountain biking. It’s an event I’ve wanted to go to since it’s inception almost 10 years ago and just never had the time or opportunity to make it. This year I finally did. I was fortunate enough to snag a media credential to this event and I shot it my way. Of course, I shot it with strobes. I’ve been testing some of the new Pocket Wizard FlexTT5′s for Nikon in development and with the lack of skiing in October, I was stoked to be able to have something this awesome to shoot and test the new gear out with. I was one of the few that was using lighting out there, it’s a very difficult event to be doing that. The action moves from spot to spot and at times you could see hoards of photographers and cinematographers sprinting from location to location in between runs to setup the next shot. The event is pure madness. From the insane action to the endless clouds of orange dust to the thunderstorms to the desert heat to the helicopters and 3d camera rigs it was just pure madness. I’m so glad I went, I’ll have some more to share soon.
I’ll have more later about the new Pocket Wizard FlexTT5′s for Nikon. For now though, I’ve been able to get full hypersync at 1/640 of a second with an Elinchrom Ranger RX AS Speed with A-Head at full power as well as with Alien Bees 400, 800 and 1600′s with half-frame (only the top half of the frame exposed with flash) hypersync up to 1/1000 of a second and about 1/3 hypersync (only the top 1/3 of the frame exposed with flash) hypersync at 1/1250 of a second. With the Profoto 7b’s and the Pocket Wizard FlexTT5′s for Nikon I was able to get a seemingly endless hypersync, however the output of the flash is limited due to the shutter speed cutting off the flash due to 7b’s slower flash durations at full power.
I’m really stoked on the potential of what I can do with the new Pocket Wizard FlexTT5′s for Nikon. What I’ve only previously been able to do with the 6mp Nikon D40 and D70 with high speed sync, I’m now able to do at 12mp with my D3 and if need be, the 24.5mp Nikon D3x. They will hopefully be released soon!
A random funny potrait out-take from a shoot for Saga Outerwear’s web giveaway campaign back in July. The shots they ended up going with were a bit more on the hectic and abrasive end so the more simple shots were more for fun. Wiley’s hair was going big Spicoli style so thought we’d get a bit more entertaining with this one. Another fun shoot as usual at the Saga offices.
This past week was quite the busy week. I went out with the JMills Entertainment crew filming for their upcoming moto video, “Elevate” to New Plymouth, Idaho for “The Big Nasty” Moto hill climb race. After a few days of shooting one of the gnarliest races I’ve ever shot, we moved on to Mountain View, Wyoming for a freeride shoot on the moon. The terrain there is crazy looking desert peaks with endless gullies and rolls. It was a lot of fun with some real long days and I have more photos than I know what to do with to edit through. Actually, it’s 66gb to be precise. I’ll have my hands full editing so this is just a tease until I can get through those. The photo above is hill climber of Jason Smith the 2010 NAHA champ in the 450 cc class.
Just a sunset and a dirt jump. Too add to the list of new subjects to shoot this summer, today I gave mountain bike dirt jumping a go. I came up to check out the jumps with Carston Oliver yesterday and was hoping we’d get a sunset today. Just about 45 min before sunset the clouds broke so we ran up to the zone to give it a go. Things turned out pretty well for my first go at it, lighting with dirt can be pretty tricky compared to the giant reflective canvas of snow that I’m used to. It was pretty fun and I can’t wait to get another go at it. Here’s what it looked like today, glad we made it out!
A few months ago I had some new neighbors move in. As it turns out they like to do a lot of dumb things on camera for the Fuel TV show Thrillbillies…pretty good for me! I finally was able to meet up with the Thrillbillies crew and got to shoot their redneck obstacle course. Needless to say, rednecks, video cameras, there was a lot of entertaining stunts going down for sure. This shot above is of Thrillbilly and pro BMX rider Pat Laughlin front flipping off a jump built for a backflip. Pat likes to send it, seems like a good mix for this crew.
This was the second time I’ve had a chance to shoot tallbike jousting and this time around I was a bit more prepared for what to expect than the first. It’s one of the funnest events that I’ve had a chance to shoot, it’s action, rediculous (come on, jousting on tallbikes…really?), costumes and there’s no shortage of carnage. What more could you really ask for? We started out at Liberty Park and once everyone came together we all moved out to the location. I actually got a chance to get ahead to the location this time since I actually made it on time and then found out where we were going! Chalk one up to being prepared this time! Check out last year’s photos here.
1/125 sec / f11 / ISO 100 / 170mm / Nikon D3 / Nikon 70-200 2.8 VR
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